Sharon Ní Chonchúir on having a baby despite her MS
10/2016
MY NAME is Sharon and I have MS (Multiple Sclerosis).
I used to keep that information secret. I even went as far as keeping it from myself, living in a state of denial about my own health for years.
But now that’s changed. I’m 30 weeks pregnant as I write this. I’m as healthy as I’ve ever been and I couldn’t be more positive about the future.
It’s taken me years to arrive at this point. I think it took so long because I started out with such a negative understanding of MS, so negative that my initial reaction was to refuse to acknowledge it.
My MS story starts in 2007 when I was 29 and going through a particularly stressful period in my personal life.
I’d been as healthy as could be until then but what I was to find out later was that many people have their first MS attack around the age of 30 and that for most of them, it’s preceded by a period of exceptional stress. I was a classic case.
One morning, I woke with a tingling sensation down my right side and called my doctor.
Fearful that it might be a blood clot, she urged me to go immediately to hospital. Within an hour, I was in Tralee General being subjected to a barrage of tests.
There was no blood clot but the doctors certainly thought something was wrong. They asked me to stay so that I could get an MRI scan and a lumbar puncture over the following days.
MS was one of the possibilities mentioned at that time but after six days of tests, none were conclusive. Because my tingling had eased a little and I had no other symptoms, I was sent home.
I learned to ignore the tingling over the next three years but then in July 2010, I woke with more serious problems. My right shoulder was in pain and, try as I might, I couldn’t get my right arm to do what I wanted it to do.
I’m a journalist so my typing is good but during this time the fingers of my right hand never hit the keys I wanted them to hit. Nine times out of 10, they missed wildly.
I called my doctor again but unfortunately, the economy had crashed between 2007 and 2010 and the health system had suffered accordingly.
While in 2007, I was immediately seen by a neurologist. In 2010, I had to wait for six weeks.
When I was finally seen, the news wasn’t good. My scan showed clusters of abnormal tissue on my brain — a sure-fire indicator of MS.
I went into panic mode the moment I was told my diagnosis. I could hardly respond to what my neurologist was saying. All I could think to ask her was what was going to happen next.
But there was no clear answer to be given. With MS, the immune system attacks the myelin sheath that surrounds the nerves.
Right now, my brain is telling my fingers to press particular buttons on my computer keyboard. That message is relayed to my fingers by my nerves and it’s helped on its way by myelin.
If myelin is damaged, that message may be garbled or may not arrive at all. That’s why my fingers kept missing those keyboard keys in 2010.
Because your central nervous system controls your entire body, where an MS attack takes place determines the impact it has.
Of the 10,000 or so people in Ireland with MS, some find that it’s their eyesight that’s affected. For others, it’s their ability to walk or something else entirely.
My neurologist couldn’t say what would happen to me. She could only recommend that I took medication and gave me four different options to choose from, each of which involved injections — a nightmare for a needle-phobe like me.
The next few days were awful. When I informed friends and family of my diagnosis, I saw fear in their eyes. I could tell they were frightened for me.
Many of them didn’t even know what to say and I would become so uncomfortable with their discomfort that I’d end up reassuring them.
Eventually, I stopped telling people because I didn’t want to deal with their reactions anymore.
I also decided on my medication. Once I’d chosen the least bad option, a nurse came to my home to teach me how to administer the injection.
She also warned me that my body might struggle to adjust to the medicine.
That was an understatement. I had to inject my medicine — a form of interferon — every second day and for the first three months I experienced flu-like symptoms after every injection.
I’d shiver with cold, have aches and pains all over and feel utterly miserable.
That wasn’t all that was making me miserable. My partner and I had been trying for a baby before my diagnosis but now we decided that the sensible thing to do was to shelve those baby-making plans (perhaps forever) and focus on my health instead.
So I continued taking medication and my body eventually got used to it. However, it took me much longer to come to terms with my diagnosis.
All I ever heard about MS back then were worst case scenarios — tales of people in wheelchairs and stories of people who had gone blind. I didn’t want to hear any of it so I went into denial and remained there for the next two years.
THAT changed in 2012, when a friend was also diagnosed with MS.
When she came to me for reassurance, I saw the fear I had worked so hard to repress shining in her eyes.
Somehow, seeing her reaction brought my emotions to the surface. I was no longer able to deny my illness. I had to do something about it.
Soon afterwards, I came across a book called Overcoming Multiple Sclerosis: an evidence-based guide to recovery by Professor George Jelinek (below).
An academic emergency physician in Australia, his mother had MS and died from it. This meant that when he was diagnosed, he had every reason to feel frightened. But rather than go into denial, he tried to discover all he could about MS.
He discovered an interesting trial that was carried out in the US in 1949. A Dr Swank asked 150 MS patients to follow a diet low in saturated fat and monitored them for the next 34 years.
During that time, 72 patients stuck to the diet and the others didn’t.
The difference in their outcomes was startling. Those who stuck to the diet deteriorated little while 45 of the others died of MS over that same period.
George also discovered studies proving that high doses of vitamin D (the so-called sunshine vitamin) could be beneficial in treating MS, that stress played a role in the condition and that exercise could have a positive impact.
He amalgamated his findings into his own personal treatment programme, changing his diet, taking a vitamin D supplement, controlling his stress and taking regular exercise.
That was in 1999 and Prof Jelinek is now in his 60s and still fit and healthy. He has gone on to recommend his approach to his patients and to write the book that I ended up reading in 2012.
I began to follow George’s advice. I took a vitamin D supplement and started to feel better a week or two after doing so.
I paid more attention to what caused me stress and did my best to avoid those things. I exercised regularly.
And I made gradual changes to my diet, immediately cutting out dairy products, meat and all fried foods and slowly weaning myself off chocolate.
The diet is hard but it wasn’t until I broke it that I realised the good it was doing me.
By July 2013, I was sticking to the diet 99% of the time but when Christmas arrived, I was tempted by roast potatoes, turkey and chocolate — all foods full of saturated fat.
By mid-January, the pain in my right shoulder was back and my right arm was no longer working properly.
It was all the proof I needed. I’ve followed the diet since then (bar the occasional nibble of chocolate) and I’ve been well.
Provided that I stick to the diet, take my vitamin D and control my stress, I don’t experience any symptoms of MS.
That tingling that I had constantly from 2007 had disappeared entirely by 2014. And, in an unexpected side effect, I now find it much easier to maintain a healthy bodyweight than I did before.
I’ve even stopped taking medicine. I told my doctor and my MS nurse that I wanted to see if I could feel well without those injections and it turned out that I could.
Once I was fully off my medication, I reconsidered my baby-making plans. If my future was no longer dominated by MS, maybe I could have that child I’d always wanted.
My partner and I are now looking forward to the arrival of a baby in the near future.
The pregnancy has been relatively easy so far, with no sickness and only the occasional bout of fatigue. However, even if it had been difficult, I don’t think I’d have complained.
I had thought that motherhood wasn’t to be part of my future and that my life would instead consist of disability and pain.
Now that Prof Jelinek has given me back the sense of control that my diagnosis stole from me, I feel my future is brighter.
That’s not to say that I don’t worry. I will always have a chronic illness and despite the fact that pregnancy has been shown to be protective for MS, suppressing autoimmune responses, I know that the months after birth — when my body will be stressed and tired — are high risk.
I’ll have to redouble my efforts to look after myself then as I’ll have a little one to look after as well.
I also know that my baby is at a slightly higher risk of developing the condition than he might be otherwise but I’m not as worried about that. I know he’s getting a lot of vitamin D in the womb.
I intend to breastfeed, which should boost his immune system, and once the time comes for weaning, I’ll make sure his diet isn’t too high in saturated fats.
I hope to live a long and healthy life with MS. I hope that the knowledge I have gained about the condition will help to protect my baby from ever developing it. And perhaps my experience with MS will help others.
MS is a devastating diagnosis for anyone to receive but there is life beyond it and that life can be healthy and full of welcome surprises.
The recommendations include1. Accept the diagnosis and express the associated grief. This is vital to your recovery and it’s something I was slow to do.
2. Start following a plant-based wholefood diet that includes fish and seafood.
3. Avoid saturated fats (such as dairy products, fatty meat, coconut oil, etc.) and altered fats like hydrogenated sunflower and vegetable oil.
4. Increase your consumption of beneficial omega-3 fatty acids by adding flaxseed, fish oil, or oily fish to your diet.
5. Increase your vitamin D levels. You can do this by sunbathing for 15 minutes a day three to five times a week if you’re lucky enough to live in a sunny country. If you live in Ireland, Prof Jelinek recommends taking a vitamin D3 supplement of 5000IU daily.
6. Learn to control your stress levels. Dr Jelinek finds meditation works for him.
7. Exercise for 20 to 30 minutes five times a week.
http://www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle/healthandlife/sharon-ni-chonchuir-on-having-a-baby-despite-her-ms-426687.html
MY NAME is Sharon and I have MS (Multiple Sclerosis).
I used to keep that information secret. I even went as far as keeping it from myself, living in a state of denial about my own health for years.
But now that’s changed. I’m 30 weeks pregnant as I write this. I’m as healthy as I’ve ever been and I couldn’t be more positive about the future.
It’s taken me years to arrive at this point. I think it took so long because I started out with such a negative understanding of MS, so negative that my initial reaction was to refuse to acknowledge it.
My MS story starts in 2007 when I was 29 and going through a particularly stressful period in my personal life.
I’d been as healthy as could be until then but what I was to find out later was that many people have their first MS attack around the age of 30 and that for most of them, it’s preceded by a period of exceptional stress. I was a classic case.
One morning, I woke with a tingling sensation down my right side and called my doctor.
Fearful that it might be a blood clot, she urged me to go immediately to hospital. Within an hour, I was in Tralee General being subjected to a barrage of tests.
There was no blood clot but the doctors certainly thought something was wrong. They asked me to stay so that I could get an MRI scan and a lumbar puncture over the following days.
MS was one of the possibilities mentioned at that time but after six days of tests, none were conclusive. Because my tingling had eased a little and I had no other symptoms, I was sent home.
I learned to ignore the tingling over the next three years but then in July 2010, I woke with more serious problems. My right shoulder was in pain and, try as I might, I couldn’t get my right arm to do what I wanted it to do.
I’m a journalist so my typing is good but during this time the fingers of my right hand never hit the keys I wanted them to hit. Nine times out of 10, they missed wildly.
I called my doctor again but unfortunately, the economy had crashed between 2007 and 2010 and the health system had suffered accordingly.
While in 2007, I was immediately seen by a neurologist. In 2010, I had to wait for six weeks.
When I was finally seen, the news wasn’t good. My scan showed clusters of abnormal tissue on my brain — a sure-fire indicator of MS.
I went into panic mode the moment I was told my diagnosis. I could hardly respond to what my neurologist was saying. All I could think to ask her was what was going to happen next.
But there was no clear answer to be given. With MS, the immune system attacks the myelin sheath that surrounds the nerves.
Right now, my brain is telling my fingers to press particular buttons on my computer keyboard. That message is relayed to my fingers by my nerves and it’s helped on its way by myelin.
If myelin is damaged, that message may be garbled or may not arrive at all. That’s why my fingers kept missing those keyboard keys in 2010.
Because your central nervous system controls your entire body, where an MS attack takes place determines the impact it has.
Of the 10,000 or so people in Ireland with MS, some find that it’s their eyesight that’s affected. For others, it’s their ability to walk or something else entirely.
My neurologist couldn’t say what would happen to me. She could only recommend that I took medication and gave me four different options to choose from, each of which involved injections — a nightmare for a needle-phobe like me.
The next few days were awful. When I informed friends and family of my diagnosis, I saw fear in their eyes. I could tell they were frightened for me.
Many of them didn’t even know what to say and I would become so uncomfortable with their discomfort that I’d end up reassuring them.
Eventually, I stopped telling people because I didn’t want to deal with their reactions anymore.
I also decided on my medication. Once I’d chosen the least bad option, a nurse came to my home to teach me how to administer the injection.
She also warned me that my body might struggle to adjust to the medicine.
That was an understatement. I had to inject my medicine — a form of interferon — every second day and for the first three months I experienced flu-like symptoms after every injection.
I’d shiver with cold, have aches and pains all over and feel utterly miserable.
That wasn’t all that was making me miserable. My partner and I had been trying for a baby before my diagnosis but now we decided that the sensible thing to do was to shelve those baby-making plans (perhaps forever) and focus on my health instead.
So I continued taking medication and my body eventually got used to it. However, it took me much longer to come to terms with my diagnosis.
All I ever heard about MS back then were worst case scenarios — tales of people in wheelchairs and stories of people who had gone blind. I didn’t want to hear any of it so I went into denial and remained there for the next two years.
THAT changed in 2012, when a friend was also diagnosed with MS.
When she came to me for reassurance, I saw the fear I had worked so hard to repress shining in her eyes.
Somehow, seeing her reaction brought my emotions to the surface. I was no longer able to deny my illness. I had to do something about it.
Soon afterwards, I came across a book called Overcoming Multiple Sclerosis: an evidence-based guide to recovery by Professor George Jelinek (below).
An academic emergency physician in Australia, his mother had MS and died from it. This meant that when he was diagnosed, he had every reason to feel frightened. But rather than go into denial, he tried to discover all he could about MS.
He discovered an interesting trial that was carried out in the US in 1949. A Dr Swank asked 150 MS patients to follow a diet low in saturated fat and monitored them for the next 34 years.
During that time, 72 patients stuck to the diet and the others didn’t.
The difference in their outcomes was startling. Those who stuck to the diet deteriorated little while 45 of the others died of MS over that same period.
George also discovered studies proving that high doses of vitamin D (the so-called sunshine vitamin) could be beneficial in treating MS, that stress played a role in the condition and that exercise could have a positive impact.
He amalgamated his findings into his own personal treatment programme, changing his diet, taking a vitamin D supplement, controlling his stress and taking regular exercise.
That was in 1999 and Prof Jelinek is now in his 60s and still fit and healthy. He has gone on to recommend his approach to his patients and to write the book that I ended up reading in 2012.
I began to follow George’s advice. I took a vitamin D supplement and started to feel better a week or two after doing so.
I paid more attention to what caused me stress and did my best to avoid those things. I exercised regularly.
And I made gradual changes to my diet, immediately cutting out dairy products, meat and all fried foods and slowly weaning myself off chocolate.
The diet is hard but it wasn’t until I broke it that I realised the good it was doing me.
By July 2013, I was sticking to the diet 99% of the time but when Christmas arrived, I was tempted by roast potatoes, turkey and chocolate — all foods full of saturated fat.
By mid-January, the pain in my right shoulder was back and my right arm was no longer working properly.
It was all the proof I needed. I’ve followed the diet since then (bar the occasional nibble of chocolate) and I’ve been well.
Provided that I stick to the diet, take my vitamin D and control my stress, I don’t experience any symptoms of MS.
That tingling that I had constantly from 2007 had disappeared entirely by 2014. And, in an unexpected side effect, I now find it much easier to maintain a healthy bodyweight than I did before.
I’ve even stopped taking medicine. I told my doctor and my MS nurse that I wanted to see if I could feel well without those injections and it turned out that I could.
Once I was fully off my medication, I reconsidered my baby-making plans. If my future was no longer dominated by MS, maybe I could have that child I’d always wanted.
My partner and I are now looking forward to the arrival of a baby in the near future.
The pregnancy has been relatively easy so far, with no sickness and only the occasional bout of fatigue. However, even if it had been difficult, I don’t think I’d have complained.
I had thought that motherhood wasn’t to be part of my future and that my life would instead consist of disability and pain.
Now that Prof Jelinek has given me back the sense of control that my diagnosis stole from me, I feel my future is brighter.
That’s not to say that I don’t worry. I will always have a chronic illness and despite the fact that pregnancy has been shown to be protective for MS, suppressing autoimmune responses, I know that the months after birth — when my body will be stressed and tired — are high risk.
I’ll have to redouble my efforts to look after myself then as I’ll have a little one to look after as well.
I also know that my baby is at a slightly higher risk of developing the condition than he might be otherwise but I’m not as worried about that. I know he’s getting a lot of vitamin D in the womb.
I intend to breastfeed, which should boost his immune system, and once the time comes for weaning, I’ll make sure his diet isn’t too high in saturated fats.
I hope to live a long and healthy life with MS. I hope that the knowledge I have gained about the condition will help to protect my baby from ever developing it. And perhaps my experience with MS will help others.
MS is a devastating diagnosis for anyone to receive but there is life beyond it and that life can be healthy and full of welcome surprises.
The recommendations include1. Accept the diagnosis and express the associated grief. This is vital to your recovery and it’s something I was slow to do.
2. Start following a plant-based wholefood diet that includes fish and seafood.
3. Avoid saturated fats (such as dairy products, fatty meat, coconut oil, etc.) and altered fats like hydrogenated sunflower and vegetable oil.
4. Increase your consumption of beneficial omega-3 fatty acids by adding flaxseed, fish oil, or oily fish to your diet.
5. Increase your vitamin D levels. You can do this by sunbathing for 15 minutes a day three to five times a week if you’re lucky enough to live in a sunny country. If you live in Ireland, Prof Jelinek recommends taking a vitamin D3 supplement of 5000IU daily.
6. Learn to control your stress levels. Dr Jelinek finds meditation works for him.
7. Exercise for 20 to 30 minutes five times a week.
http://www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle/healthandlife/sharon-ni-chonchuir-on-having-a-baby-despite-her-ms-426687.html
